Active admin "Dungeon Mastering" NPC content

I am a sub admin in a server that is dedicated to anti troll/griefing. Its working towards being a "co-op, PVE" world, with admin (me) adding extra NPC content above and beyond the included encounters, drones, and cargo ships.

I have had a great deal of fun simply "dungeon mastering" a few of the main factions with NPC paste-ins (at their request), and have learned a great deal about the new AI and Spawn mechanics included in vanilla.

Here are some "Events" that have occurred, and will occur once discovered:

- placed a moon mining operations post (from moon easy start) on the Moon opposite of the main factions base there. poof. moon drone spawner, and base to raid. They loaded up an APC truck of theirs and made the trek across the moon to go take it on. After watching them a bit in spectate, I realized they were rather bored, and the drones from the station didnt come in fast enough. So I started pasting more in. here, there, above, behind, in pits. made it much better for them by being, well, more hectic.
When they got to the base, surprise surprise there were 6 drones somehow there waiting. after finally defeating the swarm and the outpost, and juuust breaking in, I secretly placed a warhead on the grid (named it Airtight Hangar Door" to be clever) and started a 5 min timer.. then told them "these pirate bases have "Screw you" warheads, FYI, you may have only 5 min or so"... it was then a mad scramble for them to loot the station and evac, with an unknown time left. It was humorous watching the engineer ants scurrying around. It was clever of them to grab the large cargo and fly it away intact... then boom
their miner didnt have the power to lift the cargo box very well and it um.. crashed partway home. While they were picking up the pieces and figuring out how to store it all.. oops 3 more drones showed up from who knows where. at the worst possible time.
quite the misadventure, but they all had a blast

- I tinkered with hand made NPC with the new drone Remote control AI, and found that I can indeed make handmade grids with npc character homing, and direct weapon fire AI. So I immediately made some representatives of the Great Tarantula faction. That I could place. Now occasionally, a strange "Hisss!" signal blips near other players, and when they investigate there is a spider turret there, but when they disable the turret and get close to it- OMG the spider jumps to LIFE and tries to point its nose galings at them, Then if they get too close and start grinding it, a sensor starte a strobe light and warhead timer, and if they hand around and let the 20 sec count down.. BOOM.. then... after all that... after the players go home and think its all done.. the "Hisss" remains, becasue the spiders tail antenna has its own mini batteries, and is placed to survive the screw you warhead detonation- thrown somewhere, still hissing... to mess with the players. just a bit.

- while doing cleanup, I discovered an APC.. a very familiar looking APC, floating in deep space 8000km from.. anywhere. I mentioned to the faction their truck was out there, they said they had no jump drive, how would they get to it? .... after thinking a bit i commented "not be surprised when if you ever see it again, It may be for Event Horizon/ V'ger reasons...." they said "shyeah, right.." so I got to work.
I modified the APC, giving it the NPC remote control (and AI brains), repainting it rust colored, and reworded some of the text panels on the inside (to read things like "you abandoned me" "i bet you replaced me already" "I protected you"), setup its antenna to flicker 1 sec every 30 sec, and added a sensor in the crew cabin, that may.. have flashed a whips image converted momo face jumpscare in the dark cabin only when they got right up close to it. Then placed it on the moon juuust within transmit range of them.
They eventually discovered it and ran over to "retrieve it" and ooh man. The rover came to life and started to buck like a mechanical bull. it was definitely NOT happy. It shot to hell the copy APC that drove up to it, and stubbornly refused to die as it flipped and rolled and contorted around with "enemies" on board it trying to hack/stop it. By the time they finally "killed it", it was a total wreck. But they got their apc back.. sorta.

Just some examples of what a "non overly sadistic" admin can do to make NPC combat content more interesting.